UCLA moves up in 2014 U.S. News university rankings

Tod Tamberg |
September 09, 2013

UCLA moved up a spot, to No. 23, in U.S. News & World Report’s newly released annual rankings of the nation’s top colleges and universities.

UCLA shared the 23rd spot in the overall national university rankings with four other schools — Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Southern California, the University of Virginia and Wake Forest University.

Among public universities, UCLA tied for second with the University of Virginia. UC Berkeley, ranked 20th overall, retained its position from last year as the country's highest-ranked public university.

The rankings, published Sept. 10, use a methodology that emphasizes factors that tend to favor private universities, such as endowments, alumni giving and student–faculty ratios.

“Our university continues to shine academically among its peers,” said UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. “Our faculty, students and staff make truly remarkable contributions each day to help build UCLA’s reputation as one of this country’s finest public institutions of higher learning.”

In addition to UCLA and UC Berkeley, four other UC schools placed among the country’s top 20 public institutions. UC Davis and UC San Diego tied for the No. 9 spot, while UC Santa Barbara ranked No. 11 and UC Irvine was No. 14.

Contributing to UCLA’s high ranking was its 92 percent graduation rate, as well as its 97 percent freshman retention rate — a category in which the campus ranked 21st among all universities. Again this year, UCLA was noted for its ethnic diversity, and the campus was represented in the “High School Counselors’ Picks” listing, in which high school guidance counselors were asked about their experience with and knowledge of colleges and universities.

Princeton replaced Harvard at the top of this year’s overall rankings, with Yale, Columbia and Stanford rounding out the top five universities in the country.

UCLA has fared well in other recent rankings, having been rated No. 10 out of 284 national universities in August’s annual Washington Monthly magazine rankings, which measure university achievement on the basis of serving the public interest.

Also in August, UCLA placed second among public universities in the U.S. in Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Academic Ranking of World Universities. That survey, which evaluated more than 1,000 institutions, also placed UCLA 12th among all universities internationally for the third year in a row. In compiling its rankings, Shanghai Jiao Tong University takes into account factors such as faculty publications and research citations and the number of alumni and faculty who have won Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals.